My previous post was poem I wrote about an event in my life almost two years ago. It was part of the beginning of a "year of hell" for me and my family. In January of 2003, over 6 months after my last heart surgery to replace the pulmonary valve and conduit, I was undergoing a cardiac stress test to see how my heart was functioning. During the test I gagged on the mouthpiece that was connected to a machine that was measuring my oxygen consumption. When I gagged my heart rate jumped from about 130 bpm to about 200 bpm. They stopped the test started taking my blood pressure. They were getting no reading at all when they were using my left arm. They then remembered that I had a BT shunt on the left side and the BP readings are not normal in that arm and possibly gone when the heart goes crazy. They called for a crash cart. They then tried to get the pressure from my right arm and they were getting normal readings. After about almost two minutes of this my heart had one of its skipped beats that I usually get and that broke the rhythm. I went from 220 to 160 in one jump. They had me sit and not move or do anything and they kept monitoring my heart rate. They debating keeping me overnight to monitor but since I was doing well and the EKG looked good I went home.
That incident including a similar event that occurred when restarting my heart and a halter monitor showing a few runs of tachycardia (fast heart rate) prompted my doctor to start me on a beta blocker (an anti-arrhythmia drug) and then have an ICD put in. I have my first ICD put in in July of 2004. Until January of 2009 I only had about 3-4 shocks from the ICD, all appropriate and all months apart from each other. At the end of January I was shocked twice in one day. I was to go to the ER if I had two or more shocks in a 24 hour period. I went to the ER of a local hospital and they monitored me overnight. Everything looked okay and they sent me hope and then I saw my regular doctor who takes care of the rhythm. That doctor said it was probably a fluke. They see this happend and I may never need another shock again or it might happen again. There is no way to tell for sure and that is why the ICD is there.
A month later I came home from work and my heart rate was up a bit so I sat down when I got home. As I sat there the heart rate was not dropping then suddenly it felt like the heart stopped. That is the only way I could describe it. A moment or two later I was shocked and then I felt the heart going but the rate was still up. My wife called for an ambulance and a few minutes later I got another feeling of the heart stopped and then a shock. I was put in the ambulance and they were switching drivers and I got two more shocks in the ambulance. Turns out the feeling of the heart stopped was the heart actually beating about about 250 to 260 bpm. I stabilized but the rate was still up over 100 bpm.
Once in the ER it started again. In about a 10 minute time span I was shocked about 6 more times. In the middle of this happening the hospital's lullaby went off as it does when a baby is born. I heart it and thought how TV cliché it was that when one life ends another begins. After constant requests by my wife that they give me something to calm me down they gave me two drugs to relaxe me. Shortly after the heart rate went down and stayed down to almost my normal rate. I spent a week in the hospital that time. This was what the poem was about.
The rest of the year was a nightmare of shocks and pacing outs. When the ICD paces you out of a tachycardia it throws an extra beat or two in at a rate faster then the tachycardia. This disrupts the rhythm which slows it down. It is similar to what a shock does but with out the kick a shock gives or the full reset of the heart.
Finally after a year, two electro-physiology studies and two ablations (burning out the cells causing the fast rhythms) the tachycardia attacks or tachy storms stopped. I been tachycardia free for about 11 months. Now will see what the future will bring. I still jump every time I feel a skipped or weird beat. This is something that will be hard to forget or get over but I'm working on it with God's help. .
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